This week, we wrap up the series of Six Samurai articles with the top guns of the team, Grandmaster of the Six Samurai and Great Shogun Shien. The other Six Samurai lay the groundwork and these heavy hitters drive it home. Each monster rewards your Six Samurai discipline in his own way and has his own unique problems to deal with.

Seasoned Veteran

The Grandmaster of the Six Samurai immediately gave the Six Samurai everything they could hope for: an easy-to-summon monster with a fair amount of ferocity and effects that are exactly what the team needed. He certainly caused quite a stir.

“You can only have 1 ‘Grandmaster of the Six Samurai’ monster on your side of the field. While you control a face-up Six Samurai monster, you can Special Summon this card from your hand. When this card is destroyed by your opponent’s card effect, add 1 Six Samurai monster from your Graveyard to your hand.”

Grandmaster of the Six Samurai’s special summon is, in a way, like a reverse Cyber Dragon. Special summoning Grandmaster of the Six Samurai by way of his effect is not an activated effect. All you need is at least one face-up Six Samurai monster on your side of the field during either of your main phases to special summon him from your hand.

Once Grandmaster of the Six Samurai hits the field, the Six Samurai gain a welcome addition to their collective. Grandmaster of the Six Samurai has Six Samurai in his card name, so every other Six Samurai monster you have on your side of the field benefits from the Grandmaster’s presence (since he’s a stronger monster who also turns on their abilities).

Grandmaster of the Six Samurai doesn’t have any of the usual effects of a Six Samurai. His on-field effects are not dependant upon other Six Samurai being in play and he cannot destroy another Six Samurai to protect himself. Instead, he has the ability to retrieve a Six Samurai monster from your graveyard whenever he is destroyed by a card effect your opponent controls.

Smashing Ground, Ring of Destruction, Lightning Vortex, and even Bottomless Trap Hole, when used by your opponent to destroy your Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, will satisfy his effect. In the case of Bottomless Trap Hole, it doesn’t matter that the Grandmaster is removed from play because his effect specifies that he only needs to be destroyed by your opponent’s card effect, without the added specification of “and sent to the graveyard” often seen with effects of this type. If your Grandmaster of the Six Samurai happens to be destroyed by your opponent’s Crush Card Virus while he is in your hand, his effect will still activate. The Grandmaster is quite versatile.

The one thing he doesn’t like is being destroyed as a substitute for one of your other Six Samurai. If you use the substitution effect of your Six Samurai and select to destroy Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, the Grandmaster will be destroyed by the effect of your Six Samurai monster and not by your opponent’s card effect.

When Grandmaster of the Six Samurai is destroyed by your opponent’s card effect, the Grandmaster’s effect activates and begins a new chain. When you activate his effect, you will select a Six Samurai monster in your graveyard as a target. You can choose any Six Samurai monster you happen to have in your graveyard, and when the effect resolves, the selected Six Samurai monster will be added to your hand.

Unfortunately, you cannot select our next monster, the almighty Great Shogun Shien.

I’ll See your Monarch, and Raise You a Feudal Lord

Great Shogun Shien is the final stage of escalation for the Six Samurai team, but he himself is not a Six Samurai monster because he does not have Six Samurai in his card name. Not that this will cause too much of a problem, because his effect helps him to fit right in quite easily.

“If you control 2 or more Six Samurai monsters, you can Special Summon this card from your hand. Your opponent can activate only 1 Spell/Trap Card each turn. If this card would be destroyed, you can destroy a Six Samurai monster you control instead.”

Great Shogun Shien becomes incredibly annoying for your adversary because his effect is completely independent of the Six Samurai. You could throw this guy into a Monster Gate/Reasoning deck and he’d accomplish the same trick. The remainder of his effect ties him into the Six Samurai theme and collectively makes the team more powerful than ever.

Like Grandmaster of the Six Samurai, Great Shogun Shien can be special summoned from your hand during your main phases if you can meet his requirement. In this case, he wants two Six Samurai monsters on your side of the field. This proves to be fairly easy to accomplish when you consider that the Six Samurai try to keep at least one active member at all times and they have a Grandmaster who can aid them in their time of need.

Great Shogun Shien can even take advantage of the “my buddy as a shield” effect shared by the Six Samurai team. Perhaps it is only natural that Shien’s troops are going to do what they can to protect their leader. Since your goal is normally to special summon Shien without tributes, you often have one or two Six Samurai cards to step in and fill this role.

The main impact of Great Shogun Shien comes from his spell and trap card restriction. This effect applies to the activation of spell or trap cards, either by flipping them face up when set or activating them from the hand. It does not apply to the activation of effects on continuous spell and trap cards like Stumbling, Ultimate Offering, or Skull Lair. For all other spell and trap cards, your opponent has one chance . . . unless you negate the activation of his or her spell or trap card. When you do that, your opponent doesn’t expend his or her one spell or trap card for the turn. It can be a bummer, no doubt, but when your opponent is going to hit your monsters with that Lightning Vortex, you’re going to want some kind of a response.

One final note on Great Shogun Shien: his effect only applies to spell or trap cards your opponent plays after you summon him. If your opponent activates Card Destruction and you chain your Call of the Haunted, selecting your Great Shogun Shien after Shien is brought onto the field, your opponent can still activate one more spell or trap card.

Don’t let any of this discourage you. Players are used to using however many spell or trap cards they need each turn to get things done, and Great Shogun Shien won’t let them. It can become quite annoying, and when an opponent’s resources have dwindled down to almost nothing, it can cost him or her the game.

Until next time, send all comments to Curtis@metagame.com